Are we running out of time? For the last several years, we have been living in a false bubble of hope that has been fueled by massive amounts of debt and bailout money. This illusion of economic stability has convinced most people that the great economic crisis of 2008 was just an “aberration” and that now things are back to normal. Unfortunately, that is not the case at all. The truth is that the financial crash of 2008 was just the first wave of our economic troubles. We have not even come close to recovering from that wave, and the next wave of the economic collapse is rapidly approaching. Our economy is like a giant sand castle that has been built on a foundation of debt and toilet paper currency. As each wave of the crisis hits us, the solutions that our leaders will present to us will involve even more debt and even more money printing. And each time, those “solutions” will only make our problems even worse. Right now, events are unfolding in Europe and in the United States that are pushing us toward the next major crisis moment. I sincerely hope that we have some more time before the next crisis overwhelms us, but as you will see, time is rapidly running out.

The following are 12 things that just happened that show the next wave of the economic collapse is almost here…

#1 According to TrimTab’s CEO Charles Biderman, corporate insider purchases of stock have hit an all-time low, and the ratio of corporate insider selling to corporate insider buying has now reached an astounding 50 to 1….

While retail is being told to buy-buy-buy, Biderman exclaims that “insiders at U.S. companies have bought the least amount of shares in any one month,” and that the ratio of insider selling to buying is now 50-to-1 – a monthly record.

#2 On Friday we learned that personal income in the United States experienced its largest one month decline in 20 years…

Personal income decreased by $505.5 billion in January, or 3.6%, compared to December (on a seasonally adjusted and annualized basis). That’s the most dramatic decline since January 1993, according to the Commerce Department.

#3 In a stunning move, Michigan Governor Rick Snyder says that he will appoint an emergency financial manager to take care of Detroit’s financial affairs…

Snyder, 54, took a step he avoided a year ago, empowering an emergency financial manager who can sweep aside union contracts, sell municipal assets, restructure services and reorder finances. He announced the move yesterday at a public meeting in Detroit.

If this does not work, Detroit will almost certainly have to declare bankruptcy. If that happens, it will be the largest municipal bankruptcy in U.S. history.

#4 On Friday it was announced that the unemployment rate in Italy had risen to 11.7 percent. That was a huge jump from 11.3 percent the previous month, and Italy now has the highest unemployment rate that it has experienced in 21 years.

#5 The youth unemployment rate in Italy has risen to a new all-time record high of 38.7 percent.

#6 On Friday it was announced that the unemployment rate in the eurozone as a whole had just hit a brand new record high of 11.9 percent.

#7 On Friday it was announced that the unemployment rate in Greece has now reached 27 percent, and it is being projected that it will reach 30 percent by the end of the year.

#8 The youth unemployment rate in Greece is now an almost unbelievable 59.4 percent.

#9 On Saturday, hundreds of thousands of protesters filled the streets of Lisbon and other Portuguese cities to protest the austerity measures that are being imposed upon them. It was reportedly the largest protest in the history of Portugal.

#10 According to Goldman Sachs, bank deposits declined all over Europe during the month of January.

#11 Over the weekend, the deputy governor of China’s central bank declared that China is prepared for a “currency war“…

A top Chinese banker said Beijing is “fully prepared” for a currency war as he urged the world to abide by a consensus reached by the G20 to avert confrontation, state media reported on Saturday.

Yi Gang, deputy governor of China’s central bank, issued the call after G20 finance ministers last month moved to calm fears of a looming war on the currency markets at a meeting in Moscow.

Those fears have largely been fuelled by the recent steep decline in the Japanese yen, which critics have accused Tokyo of manipulating to give its manufacturers a competitive edge in key export markets over Asian rivals.

#12 Italy is an economic basket case at this point, and the political gridlock in Italy is certainly not helping matters. Former comedian Beppe Grillo’s party could potentially tip the balance of power one way or the other in Italy, and over the weekend he made some comments that are really shaking things up over in Europe. For one thing, he is suggesting that Italy should hold a referendum on the euro…

“I am a strong advocate of Europe. I am in favor of an online referendum on the euro,” Beppe Grillo told Bild am Sonntag.

Such a vote would not be legally binding in Italy, where referendums can only be used to repeal laws or parts of laws, but would carry political weight. Grillo has said in the past that membership of the euro should be up to the Italian people.

In addition, Grillo is also suggesting that Italy’s debt has gotten so large that renegotiation is the only option…

In an interview with a German magazine published on Saturday, Mr Grillo said that “if conditions do not change” Italy “will want” to leave the euro and return to its former national currency.

The 64-year-old comic-turned-political activist also said Italy needs to renegotiate its €2 trillion debt.

At 127 per cent of gross domestic product (GDP), it is the highest in the euro zone after Greece.

“Right now we are being crushed, not by the euro, but by our debt. When the interest payments reach €100 billion a year, we’re dead. There’s no alternative,” he told Focus, a weekly news magazine.

He said Italy was in such dire economic straits that “in six months, we will no longer be able to pay pensions and the wages of public employees.”

And of course government debt has taken center stage in the United States as well.

The sequester cuts have now gone into effect, and they will definitely have an effect on the U.S. economy. Of course that effect will not be nearly as dramatic as many Democrats are suggesting, but without a doubt those cuts will cause the U.S. economy to slow down a bit.

Well, everyone should keep watching Europe very closely, and it will also be important to keep an eye on Wall Street. There are a whole bunch of indications that the stock market is at or near a peak. For example, just check out what one prominent stock market analyst recently had to say…

“Most of the rally in the stock market since 2009 can be chalked up to the Federal Reserve’s attempt to create a ‘wealth effect’ through higher stock market prices. This only exacerbates the downside risk. Why? The stock market no is longer a lead indicator for the economy. It is instead reflecting Fed manipulation. Pushing the stock market higher while the real economy languishes has resulted in another bubble.

“The next leg down will not be a partial correction of the advance since the 2009 lows. It will be another major financial crisis. The worst is yet to come.”

Sadly, most people will continue to deny that anything is wrong until it is far too late.

Many areas of Europe are already experiencing economic depression, and it is only a matter of time before the U.S. follows suit.

Time is running out, and I hope that you are getting ready.

So what do you think?

How much time do you believe that we have left before the next wave of the economic collapse strikes?

Will this be the last normal holiday season that Americans ever experience? To many Americans, such a notion would be absolutely inconceivable. After all, in the affluent areas of the country restaurants and malls are absolutely packed. Beautiful holiday decorations are seemingly everywhere this time of the year and children all over the United States are breathlessly awaiting the arrival of Santa Claus. Even though poverty is exploding to unprecedented levels, most families will still have mountains of presents under their Christmas trees. Of course a whole lot of those presents were purchased with credit cards, but people don’t like to talk about that. It kind of spoils the illusion. Sadly, the truth is that our entire economy is a giant illusion. The extreme prosperity that we have been enjoying has been fueled by debt, and any future prosperity that we will experience is completely dependent on our ability to go into even more debt. The total amount of debt in our economy is almost 10 times larger than it was just 30 years ago, but we don’t like to think about that too much. Most Americans are way too busy living the good life to be bothered with “doom and gloom”. Well, get ready to say goodbye to normal. As history has shown us, no financial bubble lasts forever, and time is rapidly running out for us.

That article appeared on Bloomberg.com the other day, and it was written by Simon Johnson, a former chief economist at the International Monetary Fund. He is convinced that a day of reckoning is coming for U.S. government finances, and he seems resigned to the fact that we will not be ready when that day arrives…

“Sooner or later, it will be America’s turn to fall out of favor with investors and to see its own interest rates rise. It is hard to know when that day will come, or precisely what pressures the country will face.

Let me only venture one forecast: We will not be ready.”

Other analysts are far more pessimistic. For example, the following is what Gerald Celente said about the “bond bubble” during a recent interview with King World News…

Eric King: “Gerald, I wanted to take a look at this upcoming issue you have coming out. (In here it says,) ‘Bonds Away! The bond bomb is ready to explode … threatening to make the real estate and dot-com bubbles, and even the Great Recession, look like market corrections.’ Can you talk about that?”

Celente: “Yes. This piece is being penned by Dr. Paul Craig Roberts, the former Assistant Treasury Secretary under Ronald Reagan. And he is convinced that the bond bubble is about to burst. This cannot continue to go on the way it is. Everyone knows that the whole game is rigged, and so is this….”

“The whole game is rigged. It’s ready to go down, and Dr. Paul Craig Roberts believes it’s ‘Bonds Away’ in 2013 as the bond bubble explodes and brings about a financial disaster even worse than the Great Depression.”

Eric King: “He’s saying here it’s a road to financial collapse that we are going to head down when this thing bursts.”

Celente: “It is. Because the whole world is being propped up by these phony bonds and it’s going to collapse. It has to happen. Interest rates are going to start going up, and when they do the bond bubble explodes. You cannot keep interest rates at zero for this amount of time and expect anything other than disaster to follow.”

For much more on all this, you can listen to another excellent interview with Gerald Celente right here.

Our politicians just assume that we will be able to borrow trillions upon trillions of dollars far into the future at super low interest rates, but that is a very dangerous assumption.

As I noted the other day, the average rate of interest on U.S. government debt was 2.534 percent at the end of November. If that number just rose to where it was about a decade earlier we would be in a massive amount of trouble.

Back in the year 2000, the average rate of interest on U.S. government debt was 6.638 percent. If we were at that level today, the U.S. government would be paying out more than a trillion dollars a year just in interest on the national debt.

But our politicians just keep borrowing and spending as if we could do this forever.

From the time that George Washington was inaugurated (1789) to the time that George W. Bush was inaugurated (2001), the U.S. government accumulated about 5.7 trillion dollars of debt.

During the first four years of the Obama administration, the U.S. government accumulated about 5.7 trillion dollars of debt.

How can anyone support this kind of insanity?

You can see an excellent video demonstrating the vastness of our national debt right here. In the end, all of this debt will absolutely destroy the U.S. dollar, our economic system and the bright futures that our children and our grandchildren were supposed to have.

As if all of that was not enough to be concerned about, there is also the threat that Wall Street could implode at any time. Most Americans have no idea that Wall Street has been transformed into the largest casino in the history of the world. The “too big to fail” banks are the ringleaders, and the derivatives bubble hangs over our financial system like a “sword of Damocles” that could fall at virtually any moment.

Everything will remain fine as long as the spiral of derivatives that our bankers have constructed remains perfectly balanced. But if something happens and it becomes unbalanced and starts to collapse, the consequences could be unlike anything we have ever seen before.

But a bigger question is what is the actual collateral backing this gargantuan market which is about 10 times greater than the world’s combined GDP, because as the “derivative” name implies all this exposure is backed on some dedicated, real assets, somewhere. Luckily, the IMF recently released a discussion note titled “Shadow Banking: Economics and Policy” where quietly hidden in one of the appendices it answers precisely this critical question. The bottom line: $600 trillion in gross notional derivatives backed by a tiny $600 billion in real assets: a whopping 0.1% margin requirement! Surely nothing can possibly go wrong with this amount of unprecedented 1000x systemic leverage.

Our entire economy has become a giant pyramid of debt, risk and leverage. At some point there is going to be a giant crash. When that happens, people are going to become very desperate.

When people become very desperate, they often accept “solutions” that they were not willing to consider previously.

We need to learn some lessons from history. This is exactly the kind of thing that happened back in the 1930s.

For example, an elderly woman named Kitty Werthmann is telling audiences what life was like in Austria back in the late 1930s…

“Farmers and business people were declaring bankruptcy daily. Young people were going from house to house begging for food. Not that they didn’t want to work; there simply weren’t any jobs.”

The Austrian people were really hurting and they were desperate for answers. When Hitler came to them with “solutions”, they were ready to embrace him with open arms…

“We looked to our neighbor on the north, Germany, where Hitler had been in power since 1933.” she recalls. “We had been told that they didn’t have unemployment or crime, and they had a high standard of living.”

“Nothing was ever said about persecution of any group – Jewish or otherwise. We were led to believe that everyone in Germany was happy. We wanted the same way of life in Austria. We were promised that a vote for Hitler would mean the end of unemployment and help for the family. Hitler also said that businesses would be assisted, and farmers would get their farms back.””Ninety-eight percent of the population voted to annex Austria to Germany and have Hitler for our ruler.”

“We were overjoyed,” remembers Kitty, “and for three days we danced in the streets and had candlelight parades. The new government opened up big field kitchens and everyone was fed.”

Sadly, America is already starting to go down the same path in many ways. If you doubt this, you can read the rest of her account right here.

When our economy finally crashes, nobody is going to be able to press a button and restore things to how they were previously. We will be told that we have to “adjust” and consider “new solutions” to our “new challenges”. Someday we will look back on the good life that we were enjoying in 2010, 2011 and 2012 and wish that we could go back to those days.

So enjoy the relative peacefulness and prosperity of these times while you still can. A horrific economic collapse is on the way, and once it strikes none of our lives will ever be the same.

So that was what we have been waiting for? That was what all the hype was about? With a little over a year until the next election, that was the “best shot” that Obama has for fixing the unemployment crisis in this country? The Obama Jobs Plan (also now known as “the American Jobs Act”) is going to cost $447 billion and it is going to do next to nothing to create more jobs. Many Americans were hoping for something bold and new from Obama, but instead what they got was a bad joke. When Obama stated that there is “nothing radical in this bill”, he was not kidding. Instead of addressing the fundamental issues that are causing job loss, Obama wants us to spend half a trillion dollars on measures that will only create a very small number of jobs. Sadly, much of what Obama is proposing actually consists of huge bribes to middle class voters. Obama is trying to keep his own job, and he appears willing to pile up even more debt in order to make that happen.

During his speech to the nation, Obama instructed Congress to either “pass this jobs bill” or to “pass it right away” 16 different times. Obama obviously feels very strongly about his jobs plan.

But will it work? Let’s take a few moments to break it down. The following are 10 reasons why the Obama jobs plan is a bad joke….

#1 The payroll tax cuts are going to cost more than anything else in the plan, but they will do very little to create jobs.

Just take a look at what is happening right now. Have the current payroll tax cuts done much? No, the unemployment rate is still over 9 percent.

Yes, the new payroll tax cuts would be deeper and they would put some more money into the pockets of American workers.

But if American workers go out and spend it on stuff made in China, how does that create more jobs for American workers?

Businesses would certainly welcome the fact that their payroll taxes would be cut, but it probably will not entice many of them to hire more people.

Why?

Because they know that the tax cut would only be temporary. After just a handful of months the payroll tax would go right back to where it was before.

Businesses are not often moved by temporary tax cuts. If you want tax cuts to really move business, then you need to make them permanent.

So does that mean that I am against these payroll tax cuts?

Absolutely not. I very much hope that payroll taxes get cut. I am all in favor of the government taking as little money from me as possible.

Look, if the federal government is going to destroy our financial system anyway, I would much rather keep as much of my own money in my own pockets as possible.

So yes, I am all in favor of payroll tax cuts.

But no, those cuts are not going to do much to create jobs. If payroll tax cuts were going to create a lot more jobs we would already see it happening.

However, if this is passed it will be a great bribe to voters because millions of Americans will see their paychecks go up and when that happens they will think of Obama.

#2 Obama’s plan to extend unemployment assistance is going to cost about $49 billion but it is not going to do much to create any jobs.

Back in 2009, Congress first authorized an extension of unemployment benefits to a maximum of 99 weeks. Five times since then Congress has reauthorized this extension.

So has this made a huge difference in the number of unemployed?

Of course not. If it was going to make a huge difference it would have done so already.

Yes, these extended benefits are easing the suffering of those that are out of work, and yes they are giving them a little extra money to spend, but let’s not pretend that extending unemployment benefits is going to create a whole bunch of new jobs.

#3 Obama is proposing $50 billion in “immediate” infrastructure spending and $10 billion for a new infrastructure bank that will be dedicated to raising private capital to finance infrastructure projects around the country.

Hopefully this will work out a whole lot better than the “shovel ready” jobs that Obama promised previously.

Yes, infrastructure all over this country is rapidly falling apart. Yes, it is a legitimate function of government to invest in public infrastructure.

But no, this is not going to create a ton of new jobs. It will create a few jobs, but it will also add to our rapidly growing national debt.

#4 According to the fact sheet on the jobs plan released by the Obama administration, direct financial aid to state governments will prevent up to 280,000 teacher layoffs, and it will also help states retain more police and firefighters.

Essentially, this is a “backdoor bailout” for the states. Yes, it will be a good thing if teachers, police and firefighters are able to keep their jobs. However, preventing job losses is not the same as creating new jobs. So this may help reduce the bleeding a little bit, but it is not going to turn the overall employment situation around.

#5 There are a bunch of other minor things in Obama’s proposal such as “modernizing” public schools and helping more Americans refinance their mortgages, but it is not entirely clear how those things will help create a lot more jobs.

Meanwhile, there are a whole lot of things that the Obama jobs plan does not do….

*It is legal to pay slave labor wages in many of these other countries. After all, why pay an American worker 10 or 20 times as much as a worker on the other side of the globe?

*In many of these other countries you do not have to provide any health care for workers.

*In many of these other countries there are virtually no environmental controls to worry about.

*In many of these other countries there are virtually no labor standards to worry about.

*In many of these other countries you only have to deal with a fraction of the “red tape” that you have to deal with in the United States.

Obama is doing absolutely nothing to address these imbalances.

#7 The Obama jobs plan does nothing about the unfair trade practices that are absolutely killing America on the global economic stage.

As I wrote about the other day, other nations are manipulating currency rates, they are openly stealing technology from our companies, they allow their workers to be paid slave labor wages and they put up huge barriers to goods and services from the United States and we let them get away with it. Our trade policies are absolutely insane, and the way that the new “global economy” is structured guarantees that U.S. businesses are going to be operating at a huge disadvantage. The following are just a few more of the reasons why foreign firms have a huge advantage over U.S. companies….

*Many foreign nations deeply and directly subsidize national industries and the U.S. government lets them get away with it. That puts our industries at a vast disadvantage.

*The United States has the highest corporate tax rate in the world. That puts our corporations at a vast disadvantage.

*Many foreign nations do not require businesses to provide health care for their employees. That puts our businesses at a vast disadvantage.

*Many foreign nations impose very little regulation on businesses. That puts businesses in the United States at a vast disadvantage. In the U.S., we have some of the most restrictive regulations in the world.

In 2011 we are going to end up with a trade deficit that is probably going to be well in excess of half a trillion dollars. According to one estimate, if the trade deficit was totally eliminated it would create 8.4 million new jobs inside the United States.

So why isn’t Barack Obama proposing to do something about all of this?

#8 The Obama jobs plan does nothing about the gigantic mountains of ridiculous regulations that are absolutely killing small business in this country. According to the Heritage Foundation, 75 new major regulations that have cost U.S. businesses more than 40 billion dollars have been passed since Barack Obama first took office.

The Federal Register (which contains all federal regulations) just keeps exploding in size. Last year alone, 81,405 new pages were published in the Federal Register.

Right now there is a good chance that you are breaking dozens of federal regulations without even knowing it.

All of this regulation is crushing our businesses and is making us much less competitive in the global marketplace.

Yes, there will always be a need for common sense regulations on business activity. But what we have right now is an absolute madhouse.

#9 The Obama jobs plan does nothing about the negative effects of Obamacare. Obamacare is going to absolutely slaughter U.S. businesses. Look, when most other nations do not burden their businesses with providing health care and we force our businesses to comply with the nightmare that Obamacare represents, who do you think has the advantage?

The other day, I noted some of the effects that Obamacare is already having on the U.S. business community….

According to a recent report from the National Federation of Independent Business, one out of every eight small businesses in the United States have either already had or expect to have the health insurance plans for their employees terminated by the health insurance companies because of Obamacare. Another recent survey of mid-size and large businesses found that nearly ten percent of them plan to stop offering health insurance coverage to workers once Obamacare insurance exchanges begin in 2014, and another 20 percent are not sure if they will continue to offer coverage or not. Our health care system is deeply broken and the ones that keep getting the short end of the stick are average Americans.

If Obama was serious about putting Americans back to work, he would do something about Obamacare.

But he is not going to do that, is he?

#10 The Obama jobs plan makes our national debt worse. Yes, Obama insists that his plan will be “100%” paid for, but he has not told us how it will be paid for.

Exactly where in the world is he going to get an extra half a trillion dollars next year?

Obama probably intends to propose some tax increases that he knows that the Republicans would never, ever agree to.

So, no, Obama’s proposals will not be paid for.

The U.S. national debt has increased by more than 4 trillion dollars since Barack Obama took office. It is currently increasing by more than 2 million dollars per minute.

We cannot afford to pile huge amounts of additional debt on to the backs of our children and our grandchildren. What we have already done to them is deeply, deeply criminal.

In the end, some of Obama’s proposals will probably get passed, none of them will be paid for, our debt will get even bigger, and the fundamental reasons for our job losses will remain unaddressed.

So hopefully you can understand why I consider the Obama jobs plan to be a really bad joke.

Tonight, millions of Americans will be sleeping in seedy motels, in their cars or in tent cities.

Just check out these pictures from New Jersey. Can you believe that some hard working Americans actually have to live like that?

We had the greatest economy that the world has ever seen.

Things did not have to turn out this way.

But they did.

Now Obama has come up with a “plan” that will not fix any of our fundamental problems but that will get us into a whole lot more debt.